1st. Published in the Newsletter of the Brazilian Association
for Irish Studies – ABEI, No. 8, August 1994.Reprinted by kind permission of ProfaDra.Munira H. Mutran, President, ABEI – São
Paulo

* Editions of the newspaper dated 1865 – 1870 can
be read on microfilm at Rio´s National Library

(Seção de Obras Raros - 3rdfloor. Index No.:PR-SOR 3279)

Although
the title of this article may suggest that it will deal with journalism and,
specifically, the history of the Brazilian press, in fact it is about Irish
immigration in Brazil.This subject has been approached through an
analysis of the articles, news items and advertisements published in Rio de Janeiro between
1865 and 1870 in The Anglo-Brazilian Times.

The editorial line of this newspaper was that Irish immigration to Brazil
was a potentially viable means of upgrading the country’s levels of economic
productivity, which had been hampered up until then by Brazil’s
general acceptance and fostering of slave labour.The Anglo-Brazilian Times both
advertised Irish immigration in Brazil
and promoted it in Great
Britain
itself.

From the moment of
its inauguration on February 7, 1865, to the early
1870´s, its editor, the Irishman, William Scully, strived fervently to make
Irish immigration acceptable to the Brazilian Imperial establishment.His first achievements included helping the
second Liberal Cabinet of Zacarias de Góias e Vasconcelos set up an
“International Society for Immigration”, as well as an impressive lodging house
for immigrants in Rio modelled upon the CastleGardens of New York, between 1866 and
1668.In spite of this, Irish
immigration was, in Scilly’s own words, “nipped in the bud”, and was never
successful in Brazil, if we judge it
by American, or even Argentinean standards.The episode that marked its failure was the collapse of Prince Dom
Pedro’s colony in Itajaí, in the Province of Santa Catarina, which was
suddenly deprived of funds and all other sources of support between 1868 and
1869, being eliminated from the Brazilian colonization programme launched in
the mid-1860´s.The political event that
appears to have heralded this sudden change of policy was the ousting of Zacarias de Góis e Vasconcelos from power in 1868.Despite the Liberal majority in Parliament,
the Emperor, Dom Pedro II, was determined to have Zacarias
sacked from his position as Prime Minister, and maintained his decision
invoking the Moderative Power enshrined in the 1824
Constitution.This
power, which was legally stronger than the other three powers, allowed him to
rule the country as a quasi-absolute monarch.

Nineteenth-century
Brazilian economic growth relied heavily on slave labour.As is well known, it was not until 1888 that Brazil rid itself of the
economic burden represented by the restrictive and counterproductive practice
of slave labour.Earlier, in 1850, the
Brazilian transatlantic slave trade had been abolished by a law passed in
Parliament, following a series of incidents between Great Britain and Brazil, which had
strained their relationship to the limit.In fact the abolition in question was brought about by British
diplomatic and military pressure. (1)

Despite the end of
the Atlantic slave traffic, the Brazilian economy still depended on slave
labour and internal arrangements were made for slaves employed in the
North-eastern provinces to be transferred to the burgeoning coffee production
areas especially the Provinces of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro in the
Southeast.However, once the supply of
slaves from Africa died out, plans for an
increase in the already existing employment of European immigrants, either in
coffee plantations or in long-term colonization programmes, began to multiply,
as Brazilian planters, Liberal policy-makers and intellectuals, and early
industrialists felt the country ran the risk of gradually isolating itself and
eventually plunging into stagnation.

However, fostering
European immigration was an undertaking fraught with uncertainties and
difficulties posed by the Brazilian landed aristocracy’s attachment to the
slave labour system.This dependence
upon slavery was supported by the country’s political and judicial systems,
through which ties of personal bondage to local dignitaries and planters were
enforced by the franchise system: small tenants normally secured their claims
to the use of land in exchange for votes and political loyalty.Their political patrons would then appoint
representatives to defend their own interests in Provincial Chambers and the
Parliament in Rio, with little regard for
genuine political representation.

Polls took place in
churches.At the head of the political
structure was Emperor Dom Pedro II, who used his Moderative
Power to appoint successive Prime Ministers.Scarcely any citizen was free from political and personal bondage.Such were some of the props underpinning the
functioning of nineteenth-century Brazilian democracy. (2)

Immigration, too, was
geared to the lever of political patronage.The allotment of colonies was strongly centralized by the machinery of
the Imperial government.Imperial
authorities earmarked funds for colonization and appointed subordinates to
carry out the distribution of land and to provide the incoming settlers with
the necessary means for lodging, inland transportation and the setting-up of
the elementary facilities required for the colonies to withstand the hardships
of their early existence.There were
also religious constraints.

These caused much
distress as mixed marriages (between Catholic and non-Catholic partners) were
forbidden, non-Catholic churches were not allowed to display any external signs
betraying their members´ persuasion (although freedom of belief was
constitutionally safeguarded), burials could only take place in Catholic
cemeteries, as they were the only ones available, and so on.In addition, corruption was widespread among
bureaucrats in charge of the administration of the colonies.As a result, the whole initiative was both
expensive and inefficient, as the number of incomers who actually settled was
greatly reduced by those returning home or moving elsewhere. (3)

On the other hand,
other attempts to attract European immigrants had great success.They were inspired by the French “metayer system” of colonization, and consisted of contracts
whereby settlers received both a cash advance for their travel and settlement
expenses and a plot of land to cultivate coffee on a family basis.Debts had to be settled with the annual crop
surplus.Meanwhile, the peasants could
make a living from the cultivation of other crops, provided they did not
neglect their contractual obligations to repay their debts with the coffee
surplus, which often entailed various kinds of abuse on the part of the
landlords.The foremost examples of this
kind of experiment was that of the Vergueiro Co. in
Rio Claro, in the Province of São
Paulo, which eventually resulted in a revolt led by over-indebted Swiss
colonists in the mid-1850´s, and the practice was gradually abandoned
afterwards. (4)

The underlying
crisis in Brazil stemming from the
increasing lack of manpower in the post-1850 period was further complicated by
the diplomatic struggle with Great Britain following the
extinction of the Atlantic slave trade.The two countries had signed an agreement in 1826 whereby the slave
traffic would become extinct by 1831.In
order to enforce this legislation mixed commissions were set up in Africa and in Rio.Searches were carried out from 1831 onwards
in order to seize slaves at sea and some of the latter were handed over to the
commission in Rio.Brazilian authorities were supposed to take
care of them until 1849 when they would have been freed, had they not been
smuggled into the country instead.Meanwhile, the treaty was never really enforced and thousands of slaves
poured into Brazil until Great Britain decided
unilaterally to put a definite curb to the slave trade with the passing of the
Aberdeen Act in 1845, empowering British ships to seize cargoes and even sink
vessels suspected of being engaged in the trade.In 1846 the agreement of 1826 became null and
void.In 1850 Brazilians grudgingly
approved their own legislation banning the slave trade, but Great Britain still was not
satisfied, demanding that the lists containing the names of the slaves held by
the commission in Rio be produced and that the
slaves actually be set free.A Minister
Plenipotentiary, William D. Christie, was appointed and was instructed to obtain
the lists.The ensuing quarrel ended
with the British Navy blockading the port of Rio de Janeiro after some
parallel incidents unconnected to the main issue, and Brazil broke off
relations with Great Britain in 1863. (5)

Nonetheless Brazil was somewhat
dependent on British capital for her early industrialization.The repayment of loans paradoxically depended
upon a coffee surplus produced by slaves.This rekindled the overheated diplomatic atmosphere in which the first
issue of The Anglo-Brazilian Timeswas published.Among the many questions addressed in its
first editorial there were pledges “… to point out, and seek for grievances and
defects in the commercial and political intercourse of England and Brazil”; the
paper would also strive “… to promote a good knowledge of each other; and to
turn attention to the immense field which is afforded to England for the
employment of a part of her abounding wealth and energy, and of the skill
acquired by so many years of pre-eminence in the constructive and creative
arts, to their mutual benefit and to a more perfect interlacing of the ties
that should bind together these two Constitutional monarchies”

Accordingly,
William Scully had to appease most Brazilians leaders in power,
and the Emperor in particular, by criticizing very strongly the way Christie
expressed his views on the slavery issue in his Notes on Brazilian Questions,
published soon after the inauguration of The Anglo-Brazilian Times.
(6)The Irish newspaperman apparently
delighted in trying to mend the badly damaged relationship between England and Brazil, (ABT No. 4,
March 24, 1865), to the point of verging on a pro-slavery stance, so as to
dismiss the charges made public by Christie and thereby please the Brazilian
political establishment. Any assessment
of how influential Scilly’s opinions regarding the Christie Affair may have
been is likely to be vague.In any case
Anglo-Brazilian relations were resumed soon afterwards, since Brazil could not wage
war against the invading Paraguayan army without British help (war broke out in
December 1864), and loans were soon obtained in London for that purpose.

In was not long before
Scully started his own campaign for massive immigration, so that England could actually employ
“her abounding wealth and energy” for the improvement of the Brazilian
economy.This task absorbed much of the
newspaper’s resources and energy until at least 1870.As far as wealth was concerned, there was a
great deal of British capital invested in Brazil.Scully was convinced that now was the time
for British (and in particular Irish) energy to play a greater role, as it had
done in the American model.

Hence,
a thorough plan for massive immigration was laid down by The Anglo-Brazilian
Times, which included territorial banks, various measures to facilitate the
incomers´ access to cheap land, protect their settlement from judicial
constraints and to safeguard them from speculators, and the setting up of a
society designed to assist immigrants upon arrival in Brazil.When the first meeting designed to create the
“International Society for Immigration” was held in early1866, Scully strongly recommended that the society must “be independent
(original italics) of the Government and of any immigration programmes”,
meaning by the latter the kind of colonizing ventures directly run by the
Government appointees.However, these
suggestions were not followed and the society turned into yet another area of
careless government expenditure.

After the
foundation of the society in February 1866, Scully denounced a series of
scandals involving prominent political figures of the Empire in swindling and
other offences.But there was also one
success story, that of the American Confederates who settled in the Province of
São Paulo and counted both on the support given by
The Anglo-Brazilian Times as a means of advertising emigration from the States
and on the facilities afforded by the society for American immigrants in
Brazil.This seemed very encouraging to
Scully, who asked the United Churches of England and Ireland, in a letter
addressed “to the Clergy of Ireland” in October 1866, to help recruit emigrants
in Ireland and send them over to Brazil.

This assistance
was duly given and, in early 1868, 300 immigrants aboard the “Florence Chipman” arrived in Brazil, amid much
discussion as to their fitness for agriculture labour, religious persuasion,
and so forth.The Ultramontaine
sector of the Catholic Church in Brazil (opposed to the
Emperor’s privileges as Patron of the Church) supported the initiative, at a
time when the Liberal Prime Minister Zacarias was
known to be a fervent Ultramontaine. (7)Although the Anglican Church appears to have
been responsible for the recruitment of the settlers, it is well known that
most nineteenth-century Irish emigrants were Catholic.In July 1868 the Prime Minister was sacked.The activities of the International Society
for Immigration came to a halt, and the feasibility of the Irish colony was
shattered: they were given poor land subject to flooding, they were denied
assistance and payment for public works they did, and the colony was not served
by any public roads.In 1869 they returned
to Rio, “in rags”, and the survivors returned to Great Britain.

Finally, two
interesting questions must be raised.First, there was a serious argument involving Scully and the Commander
in Chief of the Brazilian forces at war in Paraguay, the then Marquis
of Caxias.At
the time the Irish settlers were about to arrive in Brazil, Scully was
urging the Brazilian government to speed up operations so as to bring the war
to an end.He claimed Caxias was delaying military operations on purpose, implying
that he was squandering resources that could otherwise have been employed for
immigration.The alleged “moroseness”
with which the Brazilian army waged the war during its final stages would have
forced the government to divide to the war effort funds vital for the
immigration programme.This can be
confirmed by sources that show that Caxias refused to
defeat the Paraguayan army in 1868. (8)

Second, there
appears to have been no British reaction to the ill-fated emigration
attempt.Instead it is very interesting
to note that 1869 is the date when Gladstone introduced in
Parliament the bill that was to become the Disestablishment Act of 1871,
whereby the Church of Ireland was separated
from the Church of England.Could this
Bill have been prompted by the failure of the Irish colony in Brazil?Would the appointment of another Minister
Plenipotentiary to deal with Irish complaints in Brazil have jeopardised
British investments in coffee and railroads?The disestablishment of the Church of Ireland certainly helped
to avert any such problem.